A FOX THOUGHT

For Ted Hughes

I imagine the landscape of your poems:

A sacred wood, a pagan burial ground

Where the eyes of wild lifeblood red

devour prey.  Surrounded by the darkness

of gothic tales.  Cold moons fall on

a perpetual November sky.

Winter soil on your chalk-white flesh

Deep in the womb of your savage earth.

The nonchalant delight of your toil, free

from the vulva noose.  That something

else is alive unseen, black velvet feathers

oiled in crude sway within black rainbows

And peck your birds-eye tomb vision.

TRAGIC-BEAUTY

For Janice x

Waiting for the Tory island ferry.

We sat on the concrete steps

Leading down to the sea.

Looking into its depth was like

Seeing through a concave glass.

Piles of distorted dogfish, heaped

On the ocean floor, huddled

together in the oblong shape

of the plastic trays that littered

the harbor. Large black crab

scurried cross their limp under-

bellies. It all seemed like a waste

below the spillage of diesel on

water. James Simmons my men-

tor sat beside me. Somehow,

I knew that the sight of those dog-

Fish conjured images of his daughter

Crushed by a horse somewhere in

Denmark. The scent of fish and drying

Blood lingered in my nostrils reflecting

A melancholy aroma. The gang- plank

Went out and we scurried aboard.

I was glad to leave the harbor behind

Although the waste twisted with me

Through the craggy inlets of Donegal.

The sun beat down on tory, on the tiny

Islands or our exposed skin.  The children

Played freely on the dust road, the bar-

Man hosed down. There was a tragic-beauty

In the cliff face I remembered from Donegal.

It was a shame to leave Tory behind, good

Guinness, the Irish language like I’ve never

Heard before and the small wonderful

Sense of the island's freedom.

PORT ANGELES 

I.M. Raymond Carver 

Your ocean view, the gravy clay. 

Poetry moulding, moistened by 

The shore of the strait. 

The ornate urn decorated with 

The fire of your words igniting 

Inspiration in me, like a father 

Or brother, I sit by your grave- 

Side communicating a poem. 

A messenger running your 

Poetic errands, knowing 

Your wounded light. 

By the shore without a care 

For the float bobbing feeling 

The ripples in me. 

A POEM BY IAIN MC GILCHRIST

A pome from the right brain.

I don’t know what I don’t know

Like an M.C. Escher handy work

I’m going in to come out.

I’m vigilant, making a connection

To the world, empathy, I’m

Grasping but I can’t cling on.

Alive but not a machine, a monkey-

Man but I don’t climb trees.

The right hemisphere, an unknown

Unknown. A friction flow pome.

I pictured the monument being shipped on the back of lorry as if it

Was sailing across the land through the psyche of Ireland planted

at the foot of Crough Patrick.

 

THE FAMINE SHIP

 

Like a funeral cortege in Dublin

Maynooth and Mullingar.

The famine came sailing through

Longford and Castlebar.

It anchored just off Clew bay

At the foot of the pilgrim hill.

Disturbing the red marrow soil like

a plough in  a furrowed drill.

 

The sculptured bones are flowers

From the spuds of our blighted past.

Dead but not forgotten in the hull

Of Erin’s mast.

 

Like a poppy in a wilderness, a sin-

Gle tear tear upon the soil, the souls

Of a million dead flow through this

Mortal coil. The artist’s indentations

Scarred like wounds on Irelands cries

Melting from a candles prayer in

The tear ducts of our eyes.

 

The sculptured bones are flowers

From the spuds of our blighted past.

Dead but not forgotten in the hull

Of Erin’s mast.

 

We have no pangs of hunger now

And no wish to leave our land but

Deep down within our hearts are

The bones revealed in sand

Layered flesh upon the bone.

Nourished on Irelands suffering

Our bellies will never groan.

 

The sculptured bones are flowers

From the spuds of our blighted past.

Dead but not forgotten in the hull

Of Erin’s mast.

PITCH AND TOSS-SMALL CHANGE 2

 

Lahinch, Co Clare, didn’t seem the right place

To write a poem.  Tourists paying through

The nose for screen-printed t-shirts etc.

Symbols of old Ireland.

 That night under candlelight, the dampness

Crept in unnoticed until you brushed the fabric

Walls of the tent. We played snap on a cheap

Plastic picnic table, my wife’s hand slapping down

On it like a ton of bricks on a Drum Cree riot day.

 

A torch light shone through unzipping the tent

And a voice came from out there in the campsite,

“Be quiet, there has been complaints”, breaking

The momentum and craic of a family on holiday,

Escaping from the north in July.

 We turned down the volume of our innocence

And laughter, my little boy cried. We played

quietly, Rummy and Poker for small change.

My wife and children shift slowly away from

The light, shadows filtering of to sleep.

 

An unrecognizable map of coins lie on the table,

Symbols of harps, queens head, lions and salmons,

Hexagonal twenty pence pieces and round Irish,

Five p’s with a thistle. Wouldn’t it be great to toss?

Two 2p’s of a lolly stick into the sky, the heads

And tails of the Irish symbols twisting and turning,

Bright sparks of mystery like a leaf falling, sun

Polishing deep layer of leafy foliage encrusted

over what I can’t recall.

 

I WHEELCHAIR INTO THE KITCHEN

For Roman Polanski

 

The leaves are golden –

green-Autumn creeps slowly in.

Evokes a poem in me.

 

I wheelchair into

the kitchen like a sea-son

wind  in leaves of being.

 

Belonging.

                                                HALF-DOOR.


                                            HACKBALLSCROSS

 

Cell-hell, shell-shock

Locked in looking out.

No parole, good

Friday-agreement.

Where did those

Ten years go.

 

Those days of hating

Myself , on suicide watch.

 

When do I get out?

SNOWFLAKES

The snow falls lightly, trickling
transparency on the glass.
its cold in this room tonight
my wife and I argue.
the usual argument:

Who gives and who receives?
After a time it

MORNING RAIN

 

I can’t see it fall behind the curtains like

an emotion I know. Just as I write this

it stalls and becomes the splash of morning.

Spluttering in the pool of loss, somewhere

below my window. It seems to move me

my family, this house to some far off

distant land where birds sing.

Parting the curtains I look to see.

The morning rain cling to the vacant

Plastic clothesline like dew upon

The hedgerows of spider webs.

 

 

 

GLOBULES

For Stephanie

 

I hid behind white taffeta silk

Lace,  bouquet’s of flowers

And a band of gold.

 

Smiling for the priest, my husband

The photographers, even my father,

The tears flowed.

 

They thought were tears of joy.

The globules of filth drip from

The recesses of my mind.

 

Ejaculating regression, flashbacks

Of disturbed memory. Why can’t

I cry, blame someone.

 

Hate him and not myself?

Knowing that it’s over doesn’t help.

My father rests in a soiled dark earth.

 

My husband is with another woman.

My children are off doing their own thing

And I’m left here alone with the snap shots

 

And a lump in my throat.

 

This is best I can do, blogger on blink again.

                       thanx Malachy O'

SLAUGHTER-HOUSE-BLUES

The swallows were a gang of misfits, an uneducated 

group of renegades with swallows tattooed on their necks. 

I came across a member of the swallows who was working 

at a slaughterhouse at the back of butchers where I worked.

He was recruited on peace work paid by the head of a pig 

or a slaughtered cow from the local kill house. Mad Mick 

as he was known around town. Took his belt of throwing 

knives buckled it around his waist outside the pigskin apron 

and walked into the pigpen.  

The poor sow had twelve knives sticking from every part 

of its body before the bolt was released into its head 

and its throat cut and the squeal (the blood clot) dragged 

from its throat.  The swallows were made up of mute, deaf 

and dumb, gypsies, and anyone who fell into that lower class 

of Nutter-category.  

Mad Mick who had sex with dead pigs while he cut out 

their innards.  I saw him one day fucking a dead pig, saying 

they are great fucks silent and dead. I saw him throw his 

cousin into a vat of blood while we were curing black 

pudding made of pig’s blood fat and spices, he looked 

like something pulled from the film Carrie.  

I saw him another day throw his fifteen-year-old brother into 

a skip of animal skin and bone and his brother swam through 

a sea of maggots.  Mad Mick was nuts you didn’t know what 

he would do next. He locked me in the freezer one day for 

hours with the carcasses of dead animals.  

His mind and the minds of all the swallows worked in 

a different way to me and you.  They chased me with 

machetes one night for beating a young brother.  During 

the day they blended into society but at night especially 

at weekends they came alive and wreaked havoc on 

the border-town. 

When the swallows were beating the shit out of everything 

in sight you didn’t want to get caught in their way.  Even 

the local Garda were afraid of them. Sorry for not being politically 

correct but to be as blunt as them you don’t get a nice traveler’s 

kick in the bollocks, you get a gypo boot in the balls and I know 

I was on the receiving end. 

I beat up his brother Paddy and his older Brother so, Nailie 

was out for my blood, I hid in the long grass after his gang 

chased me with machetes.  He passed me just inches 

away moving the grass with a machete, my heart was racing

in my chest, I thought he would hear me, he was so close,

it beat so loud in my chest. 

Just days before they  threw my disabled friend through a shop

window, he cut his throat and died. I couldn’t prove it but I knew, 

Tony was just a bit slow, would do no harm to anyone, just a big 

harmless guy. We followed bands for the music and craic, 

I was just too young but I was always there in the background. 

The pubs and clubs didn’t have an age limit on the door.  

I got into that gang through my brother and his friend. I was 
only fifteen but that was the days before underage drinking ID.
Back to the night, the brew of mayhem.  It all began in a dive 
we called Slaughter House bar. It was the sort of dive with saw-
dust on the floor, a local joint for the swallows to meet have
a drink and offload a week in the kill house.  

Paddy and the boys sat around the top table. They talked
about who lost a finger and their insanity this week 
in the madhouse they worked in. The band sound checked
amid shouts of orders of pints and chasers. When the Provos
arrived and sat at their table as if they owned the place. 

You knew that all hell would break loose, they eyed their
beady eyes and got drunk like gangs of sheep to the slaughter house blues.  Then the Irish army came dressed as if they were going to a funeral with dark ties.

The swallows were well oiled at this stage stumbling along
the stage into the bog covered in graffiti, the stench of urine
hummed from the urinals. The lead singer ranted on through the mic, the accent of his Dublin street charm went straight into his set creating a lively atmosphere. 

Everybody enjoyed the craic and banter through the mic. 
As the roof lifted to the rocked-up version of the Fields 
of Athenrey and the and the swallows, the Provos 
and the army bopped to Whiskey in the Jar and Dirty Old 
Town the night began to mellow into madness.  

The place resembled that of a place where a bomb had hit. 

Sammy the mute got up and bounced along the front 

of the stage and stood over the urinals, cock in hand 

he steadied himself on the wall and looked to his right 

at the weedy guy with a black suit white shirt and a pencil 

thin black tie and hat. 

He reached across and gripped him by the tie took the trilby- 

hat from his head finished his piss and turned to look at him-

self in the mirror.  Uttering some incomprehensible mutter 

the weedy guy took an empty pint glass from the top of 

the urinal put it down to his cock filled it with piss.

Turned and handed it to the mute who downed it half-
way before spitting it out then realizing it was a pint of
piss and pulled a flick knife on the weedy guy
and stabbed him in the leg, he stumbled through
the door and fell 
at the stage.  

The mute stood over the body with a face like thunder 
kicking his head, the Provo’s broke glasses and bottles 
and went at the swallows.  When the realization of what 
happened ran along the front of the stage all hell broke loose. 
The tables and chairs went flying into the Ra men and the
Irish army, the swallows organized themselves around.

Sammy the mute and other stood by the bog door armed 
with knives knuckle dusters and broken glasses and bottles 
they stuck into anything that came near them. Mad mick 
grabbed a bloke by the hair pulled him into the toilet stuck 
his head in the urinal and slit his throat like an animal.   

Even the cops who were called on the radio wouldn’t 
venture into the madness. By this stage the band had 
left the stage and were tossing the drum kit and guitars 
into the van and getting out of dodge.

As I walked home along the black path through the railway 

bridges the stench of stale hops from the brewery thinking 

this was my apprenticeship to butchery, it was then I knew,

I wanted to be a writer.

MOTHER

Before I put pen to paper
this seems a worthless task.
On many other attempts I failed
to write a poem about my Mother.

Maybe in its failure this poem
Will succeed to show, the strength
of her fragility, the wisdom
of her smile, her breasts

Nurtured me and her soft loving
hands that held me close and wiped
fear from my eyes.



SMALL CHANGE

I jumped on the Bus Eireann at Letterkenny

without a thought for the small change

Medaling around in my pocket.

the driver said, " Eight pounds ninety "

I handed him the ten-pound note, sterling.

He gave me my change, a bronze

and silver coin with the queens head,

Saying, " thank you. "

The border we crossed seemed nonexistent

Until the green corrugated steel and barb-wire

Loomed like micro-wave television beamed

From the blue-Stack mountains.

At the Ulster-bus station in Derry, I mingled

With coffee, cigarette smoke and backpackers

From all over the world. I wonder were

They aware of the small change

and the symbols embedded in them.

I sat at the back of the bus, destination
Belfast. I wanted to close my eyes and not
Notice The grey mist over Glenshane pass,
But three Liverpool lassies rattled on about
The depression of Derry, have you been
To Liverpool, I thought? A four hundred pound
Fine above their heads if they lit-up.

They had cigarettes jammed between their
Lips and lit before they hit the door
and the black tarmacadam of
Great Victoria Street station.

At the ticket office, I asked for a ticket
to Craigavon, " Three pounds, please ",
and I gave her the small stack of coins
with the symbol of a harp, and Eire, 1990.

She threw them on the time-tabled counter like
a child with something hot on its tender-
flesh, " I'm sorry," she said " but we
cant take them ", What do I do ", I asked,
How do I get home."

 " Sorry ", she said, again. I felt like calling her
something that rhymes with a punt but I didn't.
I was abandoned in Belfast between two-
worlds, one was tugging at the heart of my English birth-right and the other crying out 
for my poetic soul. I went to the shop

and explained my plight, " Sorry ", she said,
" There's nothing we can do ". A beautiful 
woman stepped up from behind me.

" How much do you need, " she said, " Three
pound ", I answered and we looked into each-other's eyes, exchanging coins with a smile.

THANX!